Israel embassy car attack linked to Mughniyeh anniversary?

Israel embassy car attack linked to Mughniyeh anniversary?

Even as India launched a probe into the Israeli embassy car blast, which injured four including a diplomat, media reports speculated the link between the blast in New Delhi and the foiled bid to attack the embassy in Georgia and that it occurred on the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah's military commander Imad Fayez Mughniyeh.

Mughniyeh alias al-Hajj Radwan was a senior member of Lebanon's Hezbollah organisation. He was alternatively described as the head of its security section and as one of the founders of the organisation.

Israel embassy car attack linked to Mughniyeh anniversary?

In Georgia capital Tbilisi, an embassy staffer discovered a bomb underneath his car as he was driving to the embassy on Monday. The bomb was, however, neutralised before it could explode.

Subsequently, Israeli security authorities raised the level of alert at its embassies all over the world. The Jerusalem Post quoted Israeli security officials saying that it was possible that the attacks were connected to the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah military chief Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in Damascus on February 12, 2008.

In recent years, Hezbollah, a fiercely anti-Israel militia that, has tried to avenge Mughniyeh's assassination.

Israel embassy car attack linked to Mughniyeh anniversary?

Mugniyeh has been associated with the Beirut barracks bombing and the United States embassy bombings, both of which took place in 1983 and killed over 350, as well as the kidnapping of dozens of foreigners in Lebanon in the 1980s. He was indicted in Argentina for his alleged role in the 1992 Israeli embassy attack in Buenos Aires.

Information about him is limited. He is reported by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to have used the alias of Hajj, and to have been called Abu Dokhan, Arabic for "smoke-bearer" or "father of smoke" -- according to US fiction writer Richard Couch because of his skill at disappearing when being pursued.

Mughniyeh was included in the European Union's list of wanted terrorists and had a US$5 million bounty on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list.